Transcript of AE 967 - Expression: Have Balls

G'day, you mob and welcome to Aussie English, I am your host, Pete, and my objective here is to teach you guys the English spoken Down Under. So whether you want to sound like a fair dinkum Aussie or you just want to understand what the flippin' hell we're on about when we're having a yarn, you've come to the right place. So sit back, grab a cuppa and enjoy Aussie English. Let's go!

G'day, you mob! How's it going? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English and get a fair dinkum dose of Aussie culture, history, news, current affairs, everything like that. If you are trying to fit in Down Under, learn more about Australia as well as level up your English, this is the podcast for you guys.

So I'm your host. Pete, thank you for joining me. If you are a long time listener, welcome back. It's always a pleasure to have you guys here and to see a familiar face. If you're a new listener and this is the first time, welcome! It's also a pleasure to have you here.

So how's my week been? My week has been OK this week. I've been doing a bit of bird photography, which has been a lot of fun. It's kind of cathartic, relaxing. It allows me to take my mind off things and just get out in the great outdoors and, you know, be at one with nature.

So I've recently been going to places like Clifton Springs, Port Arlington, Indented Heads, and doing some photography of seabirds, in particular pelicans. And I'm sure you guys know what a pelican is right there. These huge birds that have long bills with this weird kind of pink throat underneath it that's very stretchy. And they kind of scoop up fish with that bill and large throat thing. I don't know what the term would be for it, but they seem to always be around and they're easy to photograph.

So I was out a few days ago and took some really cool photos of them and just played around with black and white photography. But they just such weird birds, man. They're always so weird. And when there's two of them together, they seem to always have these weird interactions where they're bickering, they're fighting and they're just- I don't know, they just- they're just the funniest birds, man. So they're great. If you love photography, I definitely recommend getting out to the coast, especially if you're down here in Victoria and taking some photos of pelicans. You'll pretty much see them anywhere there's a boat ramp because they love hanging out where there are boats from fishermen because they like to get fed. Right. I think the fishermen tend to like giving them food.

Before we get into today's episode, guys, and the weekly news story that I've got for you, which is a ripper, it's a bit of a funny news story. You'll like this one. Don't forget that if you want access to the premium podcast, which gives you the transcripts, the downloads, the premium podcast player so you can read and listen at the same time, gives you the video lessons with vocab video clips, everything designed to help you if you're a visual learner like me, gives you access to all that sort of stuff, just go to www.aussieenglish.com.au/podcast and sign up.

All right. So let's get into the news story. So this week, a 17 year old girl named Hailey has had a lucky escape and been hailed a hero after she went toe to toe with a female black bear in California in the United States of America. CCTV captured the moment the black bear and her two cubs were walking along the fence of Hailey's house. Startled, her dogs, went into attack mode and ran out into the garden, barking at the bear. Initially, Hayley thought it was just a dog or squirrel that was causing all the commotion. But when she looked out the window, she noticed that there was a bear attacking her dogs. As the bear cubs bailed into the distance, the mother bear was seen balancing on the fence, scooping up the smallest of Hailey's dogs. Before she had time to think, Hailey ran out of a house and punched the mother bear off the fence in order to save her dog and send the bear and her family running for the hills.

She managed to escape the encounter intact and bearing no scars at all except for a sore, twisted finger. Not bad, considering she went face to face with a mama bear and didn't come off the worse for wear. So good job, Hailey.

All right. So, yeah, incredible story there. That is the kind of thing you are never going to see in Australia, someone punching a bear unless it was a koala bear. Technically, they're not bears. And I don't know why you would ever punch one, because they're not vicious. Maybe if it was a drop bear, but you don't really come into contact with those very often.

Anyway, I got a joke for you guys. So slap the kookaburra and let's get into the joke. All right, so the joke is related to bears, obviously, that's what today's episode is all about and it's a funny one. Are you ready, are you ready? What do pandas pack for camping trips. So pandas are these bears that are black and white. They eat bamboo. I think they're one of the only, if not the only herbivorous bear. They live in China. Pandas. What do pandas pack for camping trips? Just the 'bear' necessities.

Look for them. Bare necessities. If you've seen The Jungle Book, you might know that song tut-tut-da-da-ra-rah bare necessities. I think it's that, right, that bears and bare necessities. That's when Mowgli's singing with the bear, "bare necessities". So here the play on words is the word bear spelled B E A R, which is a large, heavy mammal that walks on the soles of its feet, has thick fur and a very short tail. It's in the dog family, but it's omnivorous. Right? So it eats both meat and berries and plants. Bears, I'm sure you know what a bear is.

Bare spelled B A R E is without addition. Right. Basic, simple. So 'bare necessities'. This is a good collocation for you guys. If you have the bare necessities, B A R E, it is that you just have enough. Right. It is just sufficient resources with nothing to spare. So if you went camping with the bare necessities, it's that you only have enough to get by. Nothing extra, right. Just the food you need, just the tent you need. That's it. Maybe a sleeping bag as well so you don't get cold at night.

So today's expression is to "have balls". A little bit of a rude expression, but it's used quite a lot in Australia and I think probably everywhere in the English speaking world. So I thought it was pertinent, I thought it would be worth telling you guys how to use this expression: to have balls. To have the balls to do something: to have balls.

Before I define the expression, let me break down the words in it. So, you know the verb "to have". I have a pen. I have a pen in my hand. It means to possess that thing. Right. I possess this pen.

"Balls" and I'm not going to show you those. This is obviously a spherical object that you can play with in terms of it being an actual ball from a ball sport. But this is vulgar, informal slang that is used for a man's testicles. Right, balls.

So I was out in the garden the other day playing with Noah. He threw a ball at me and it hit me in the balls and that was pretty unpleasant. True story.

So a man's balls are the sexual organs that produce sperm and testosterone, right? They are his testicles. Balls.

So there are a few expressions about balls that we use in this sense in English. And I'm sure, I am absolutely certain that you have them in your language as well. It tends to be a common theme in all the languages I've ever learnt. They'll have something related to testicles.

So if you have balls, you are courageous, you are brave, and it can be used for both men and women. You know, it's kind of almost used, ironically, when you say it about a woman, right? Well, she's got balls because she obviously doesn't have balls. But at the same time, she does. If she's courageous, if she's brave.

We also have the adjective "ballsy", if you are ballsy of something. It was ballsy. It is that that thing was brave. That thing was courageous. So that was a ballsy effort. Wow. That was really ballsy.

We've also got the expressions "to take a lot of balls". To do something usually, right, meaning requires a lot of courage or bravery. It took a lot of balls to ask your boss for a raise, right? Took a lot of balls to do that. I admire bravery. I admire courage. I admire your balls.

And then lastly, to have the balls to do something. Again, this is kind of used to have the courage and bravery, but almost in a kind of arrogant or audacious way. "You know, I can't believe he had the balls to ask for a raise. Far out!" That was really, really- kind of annoyed me, but was very brave at the same time.

Now, just bear in mind, guys, there is quite a few other ball related expressions in English. One is "to have a ball" and this has nothing to do with testicles. This instead has to do with "a ball", meaning "a gala dance", right. Where people dress up in dresses and suits and they do a lot of dancing and eating and drinking and just have a lot of fun. They have a ball and that's what the expression means. If you have a bowl, you have a great time.

So the origin of the expression "to have balls". "To have balls", no idea where this originally comes from. It's probably been with us since the beginning of time. But expressions like these are common in many languages. And I bet that you can tell me one in your language that has something to do with being macho, being manly, being brave, being courageous.

So now let's go through a few examples of how I would use the expression to have balls in English. But before we do that.

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Ok, so example number one. So my great grandfather served in France in the First World War. In the years 1916 to 1918 and he was an Army chaplain. He had the job of marking the injured soldiers on the battlefield who'd been shot or wounded. So he used to have to run out from safety, from cover, and plant these little white flags next to people who were still alive and could be saved.

As a result of his efforts and his bravery and his courageousness, he ended up being awarded with the Military Cross, two times! His efforts obviously bore a lot of fruit and he likely saved many lives. Whenever I heard about this story, growing up, from people like my dad and my mum, I always thought, man, he had a lot of balls to do what he did. The effort that he put in was really ballsy. I couldn't believe he had the balls to go out into no man's land where people were shooting at him and save the lives of other people. How courageous. Must have taken a lot of balls, must have required a lot of bravery.

Example number two, imagine that you're a young woman who started working at a law firm. So you're incredibly hard working, talented, tenacious. After a few years of working in this firm, you end up tackling a really difficult case and you have to bring to bear all your skills to do a great job and make it a success, which you managed to do. Afterwards, you approach one of the partners at the firm and you ask to be given a raise or maybe even be promoted to being a partner as a result of your incredible job. So you're so good. You're putting all the other lawyers to shame at the law firm. They're impressed with your work. They think that you've got incredible balls coming up to them and asking for a raise; that was really ballsy. You know, they couldn't believe you had the balls to ask for a raise. So they decided to give you a raise. Right. This woman's got balls. Wow. Give her a raise. Make her a partner.

Example number three, so one day you're driving to work and you witness a huge traffic accident. Right? So maybe there's this huge petrol tanker truck that comes past. Somehow it loses control, tips over, explodes into flames, other cars crash. It's just a nightmare, right? There's a lot of carnage and chaos.

You pull over to the side of the road safely and then jump out of your car and spring into action. Right. So you just get amongst it, helping survivors, bandaging up wounds, applying CPR, dragging people from the wreckage of their cars that's on fire and, you know, then waiting with them whilst the ambos arrive, the ambulance and medics. Once they get there and seen the job that you've done saving all these lives, they may think, you know, or say, "Wow, you had balls! You had a lot of balls helping all these people in this situation. It was really ballsy." "We can't believe you had the balls to help all these people." "You were incredibly brave. You were courageous. You had a lot of balls."

So there you go, guys. Now you understand the expression "to have a lot of balls", "to have the balls", "to do something ballsy", "to take a lot of balls". There's a lot of variations. But the basic idea here is that we can use "balls" referring to testicles and you possessing them, whether or not you literally do, to mean that you are brave. To mean that you are courageous, right. Took a lot of balls to create this episode about balls. Not really.

Anyway, let's go through the pronunciation exercise guys here where I'm going to read out a series of phrases. I want you to listen and repeat after me and focus on things like your pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, everything like that.

OK, let's go. To. To have. To have balls. To have balls. To have balls. To have balls. To have balls. I've got balls. You've got balls. He's got balls. She's got balls. We've got balls. They've got balls. It's got balls. Good job, guys.

Now, one thing you may notice is that quite often when 'have' gets contracted onto a pronoun like "I have" becoming "I've", "you have" becoming "you've". "She has", "she's" you know, the drill. You know how it goes. Quite often we add "got" afterwards because we don't like contracting an auxiliary verb like that and then leaving their space after it with no other verb. So it's a bit weird to say "I've balls". "You've balls". Instead, as a result, and it's kind of redundant, but we still do it. You could say "I have balls" or you can contract "have" and say "I've got balls".

Two things to notice here. The T in the word "got" gets turned into a glottal stop. So I don't actually stop this T with the tongue in my mouth. I use my throat. I've got balls. I've got balls. This is because there's a consonant coming after it, another stop consonant, the consonant B. Got balls, got balls.

The other thing is the dark L in the word "balls". So you won't hear me say balls with the light l where the tongue is touching the roof of my mouth. Instead I say balls, balls, balls. And so it's actually done with my lips.

If you want to learn about how to use the T is a glottal stop as well as how to use the dark L and when you should use these in English pronunciation, make sure to check out my Australian Pronunciation Course, which you can get access to at www.aussieenglish.com.au/apc.

So to finish up guys, before we go through a little fact about koala bears, I wanted to mention, did you notice that I used a few different expressions using the word bear B E A R. So "to bring to bear" meaning 'to bring something into operation or effect'. "To bear something in mind", meaning 'be mindful of something' or 'consider something'. "To bear the scars" or "to bear no scars". This is 'to suffer emotional scars because of something'. But it could also be that you physically have scars on your body as a result of something. And then "to bear fruit", meaning 'yield positive results'. So I use these expressions in this episode and my task for you, before we finish up- well, do it after we finish up. Go back and listen and see if you can hear when and where I've used these expressions: 'to bring to bear', 'to bear in mind', 'to bear the scars' and 'to bear fruit'.

Ok, so, Aussie fact-wise, I wanted to talk about koalas, which is sometimes known as koala bears, but they're not bears, they're marsupials. So when they were first discovered in Australia by Europeans, they were compared to monkeys and bears because they resembled them and lived in trees. The name Koala is derived from the indigenous Dharug word "gula" or "gulamany", which means 'no drink'. And this is because koalas don't need to drink water very often because they get enough of their water and moisture from the eucalyptus leaves that they eat.

Europeans first spotted them around Sydney Cove after arriving in the late 1700s. It wasn't until the early 1800s, though, that the first koala was shot and caught and described to the public in the Sydney Gazette newspaper. And I actually found that article here and wanted to read it to you. So this article is from the 21st of August 1803, when the Sydney Gazette informed the public that the first specimens of a new species had been discovered. So here's what they wrote.

An animal whose species was never before found in the colony is in His Excellency's possession. When taken, it had two pups, one of which died a few days hence. This creature is somewhat larger than the wombat, and although it might at first appearance be thought much to resemble it, nevertheless differs from that animal. The four and hind legs are about of an equal length, having five sharp talons at each of the extremities with which it must have climbed the highest trees with much facility.

The fur that covers it is a soft and fine, and of a mixed grey colour that is, are short and open. The graveness of the visage, which differs little in colour from the back, would seem to indicate a more than ordinary portion of animal sagacity. And the teeth resemble those of a rabbit. The surviving pup generally clings to the back of the mother or is caressed with a serenity that appears peculiarly characteristic. It has a false belly like apposin (a possum), and its food consists solely of gum leaves in the choice of which it is excessively nice.

So there you go. Naturalists gave the koala the scientific name Phascolarctos cinereus, which is derived from the Greek words meaning 'ash grey pouched bear'. So since it was discovered one way or another, the name "Bear" has been associated with the koala, although it is not a bear, and many Australians will chastise you, albeit nicely if you refer to it as a koala bear. They're just koalas.

Anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I hope you learnt a lot. Bear in mind not to kill koalas. Koala bears. I'm Pete. This is Aussie English and I'll see you next time. Bye.